Our two archaeologists, Dan and Jeremy, have taken local people on a remarkable journey. Today, the final act was to lift an Iron Age skeleton, found on the last day of the two-week community excavation.

To lift it required a licence, so the find was kept under wraps until paperwork in place, our 2000-year-old former Northdown Road resident could be carefully removed.

The skeleton was a crouch burial: the body laid as if curled up and sleeping, in the bottom of a bell-shaped chalk pit. Looking up from the pit today to blue skies and seagulls above, it was easy for the years to slip away, and to be able to imagine the small Iron Age community living a rural life on this site.

After conservation and analysis, the Margate Caves trustees will decide how to best preserve the remains, and whether to display them in the new visitor centre that’s being built on the site. That building will be open next spring.

As the archaeology ended, the Caves were reopened today so that the underground specialists from High Peak Geotechnical could start work. That’s a big step closer to welcoming the public back to Margate’s lost attraction at No. 1 Northdown Road.

A very interesting article. However, from what I gather from it, requiring “a licence” to remove the remains, implies that it’s only ‘legal’ to do so if the archæologists pay money for the privilege. Licence indeed. Bah humbug!